Union Hospital

Peripheral immune influences on the brain: adaptive immune T and B cells regulate cognitive dysfunction

Abstract Cognitive dysfunction is recognized as one of the most concerning complications in aging as well as in disease states such as neurodegenerative disorders and stroke. Although previous studies mainly focused on local brain pathology, growing evidence highlights neuroimmun...

Information asymmetry and alternative financing for SMEs: Evidence from credit unions in Ghana

This study examines SME credit accessibility through the lens of Information Asymmetry Theory, focusing on the mediating roles of credit history and cash flow stability as financial transparency mechanisms. Data from 205 respondents across 88 credit unions in Ghana were analyzed...

Depressive Symptoms Trajectories Across the Transition to Cardiovascular Disease in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A Multicohort Study

Abstract Aims The long-term depressive symptoms trajectories across the transition to diagnosed cardiovascular disease (CVD) remain poorly characterized. We aimed to investigate trajectories of depressive symptoms before and after incident CVD in multinational aging populations....

Nanomaterial engineering for recoil management and daughter-nuclide redistribution in targeted alpha therapy

Recent advances in targeted alpha therapy have highlighted a central but still unresolved nanobiotechnology problem, namely how to control the fate of recoil daughters after alpha decay. After alpha decay, recoil daughters may escape from the carrier and redistribute to non-targe...

Asian Neurogastroenterology and Motility Association and Asia-Pacific Association of Gastroenterology Chronic Constipation Consensus 2026.

Background/Aims: : Chronic constipation is a common gastrointestinal (GI) disorder in Asia, characterized by heterogeneous symptom presentation, frequent overlap with other GI symptoms, and limited access to specialized diagnostic tests in many settings. These factors contribute...

DNASE1L3 as a prognostic biomarker associated with immune cell infiltration in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) is a highly aggressive malignancy, associated with a poor prognosis and a five-year survival rate of less than 9%. Although DNASE1L3 is known as an apoptosis-related gene, its specific role in cancer remains unclear. This study aimed to investigat...

Sirtuin 1 Inhibition Attenuates Viral Myocarditis by Suppressing the Nuclear Translocation of Pyruvate Kinase M2 to Rebalance Th17/Th9 Differentiation

Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) regulates CD4 + T cell differentiation, particularly Th17 and Th9 subsets, in various autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, but its role in viral myocarditis (VMC) remains poorly understood. In this study, using a coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3)-induced VMC mouse model...

Targeting NOX1/4 promotes macrophage phagocytosis and improves radiotherapy via YAP1/TEAD4-CD47 in non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract Radiotherapy is a mainstay treatment option for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, radiation remodels the tumor immune microenvironment by adaptively upregulating the immunoregulatory checkpoint CD47, leading to phagocytic evasion and radioresistance. Although...

HBV re-activation is associated with increased mortality and dysregulation of oxidative and polyamine metabolism in pre-acute-on-chronic liver failure

Abstract Background/Aims Acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is one of the deadliest complications of chronic liver disease yet treatment options are sparse. In Asia, HBV-reactivation (HBVr) is one of the most common triggers. Recently, HBV-associated ACLF was associated with d...

Efficacy and safety of PD-L1 versus PD-1 inhibitors as consolidation therapy following concurrent chemoradiotherapy for unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer: a real-world retrospective study

The PACIFIC trial established consolidation immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) following concurrent chemoradiotherapy (cCRT) as standard care for unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Both programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and programmed death‑ligand 1...

High–spatiotemporal resolution deuterium metabolic imaging enables in vivo phenotyping of intra- and intertumoral heterogeneity

Intra- and intertumoral heterogeneities raise fundamental biological questions and have important implications for accurate cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. These heterogeneities reflect tumor complexity, including a pronounced diversity in metabolic phenotypes and pro...

Causal effects of diabetes and alcohol intake on Dupuytren’s disease: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study in UK Biobank and FinnGen

Background: Dupuytren's disease (DD) is associated with metabolic and lifestyle traits. However, these associations remain uncertain because exposures frequently cluster, and conventional studies are vulnerable to residual confounding and reverse causation. Methods: A two-sample...

An explainable biomedical foundation model via large-scale concept-enhanced vision–language pretraining

Artificial intelligence for medical imaging is required to be accurate and interpretable to clinicians. However, current multimodal biomedical foundation models often prioritize performance over explainability. Here we present ConceptCLIP, an explainable biomedical foundation mod...

The Role of Lachnospiraceae in Liver Diseases: Recent Advances and Clinical Application Prospects

Chronic liver diseases impose a considerable global public health burden, yet available treatment options remain largely inadequate. The gut microbiota exerts a key modulatory effect on liver disease pathogenesis via the gut-liver axis. Among them, Lachnospiraceae, a dominant bac...

Neutrophil heterogeneity and crosstalk with cerebral-resident cells: therapeutic targets for ischemic stroke

Acute ischemic stroke elicits a robust inflammatory response within the brain. As one of the first peripheral immune cells to infiltrate the ischemic parenchyma, neutrophils show high heterogeneity and engage in complex crosstalk with resident brain cells. In this review, we firs...

Attitudes to sex education among undergraduates without medical background in China

This study, guided by the Knowledge-Attitude-Practice (KAP) theory, aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitudes, and needs regarding sex education among undergraduates without medical background at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. This cross-sectio...

The COACH theory formalizes clinical reasoning in the development and validation of medical artificial intelligence systems

The development and deployment of medical artificial intelligence (AI) systems are limited by two persistent gaps: clinician knowledge is often introduced late in development as labels or annotations, and deployed systems often provide outputs that are difficult to reconcile with...

Cancer drug response and resistance: molecular mechanisms and combating strategies

Despite remarkable advances in cancer drug treatment, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy, therapeutic resistance remains a formidable clinical barrier, limiting durable responses and long-term survival. Drug resistance can be broadly categorized as intrin...

Nasolacrimal duct obstruction following allo-HSCT: an overlooked manifestation of ocular graft-versus-host disease

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is a curative treatment for a broad spectrum of benign and malignant haematological disorders [ 1 ]. However, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) remains a major long-term complication, with ocular involvement occurring...

Deep learning-based analysis of paraspinal muscle changes in lumbar disc herniation

Lumbar disc herniation (LDH) is a predominant cause of low back pain, significantly affecting the quality of life of patients and closely linked to the condition of paraspinal muscles (PSM). However, existing two-dimensional (2D) measurement techniques that rely on muscle cross-s...